Not being approved for PayPal Payments Pro

never had this problem before

[wesmaster]

Anybody have experience with NOT being approved for PayPal Payments Pro?

We currently have 3 websites that use Payments Pro (with another 2-3 that use Payments Standard) and are working on a 4th website where we want to take Credit Card orders directly on the website. All of our accounts are set up in a parent/child relationship, so PayPal knows that all of these successful, non-shady, accounts are related.

But, the new website did not get approved for Payments Pro because of the business model / product. I don't want to go into great detail about the product, but it's a service where we help new websites launch, as far as popularity, a bit of a viral marketing service. It's definitely a new concept that the regular PayPal employee wouldn't really "get", so I'm not surprised.

Our last Payments Pro application took forever to get approved because they didn't understand what we were selling (crowdsourced business name contests), so again, I'm not completely surprised that they need help to understand this new website. But, I didn't expect to simply be told, "No, we're not going to ever approve this website for Payments Pro, even if you have a proven track record, now or any time in the future."

Anyone else have experience with this?

[HRoth]

Maybe it would help if you can talk to a supervisor at Paypal. I had the experience recently of after 12 years of taking Paypal, they decided that what I was selling was dicey and that they would no longer allow me to use their service, nor would they do so in the future, ever, period, go and drop dead now. From what few clues I got, I thought they misunderstood what I was selling, that they were seeing their own expectations instead of what was actually there. I sent extremely detailed emails explaining what I thought the misunderstanding arose from. I made no accusations and didn't take a snotty tone. I asked to speak to a supervisor by phone. I finally did. She immediately started in with the Paypal party line on the issue. I interrupted and began giving her my evidence that they were mistaken. It was difficult to penetrate the Paypal-think, but eventually she decided to do a hand review of my site. This was done and they apologized that they had made an error(!) and I was reinstated. They also said that they made a note in my file about the issue so it would not come up again. This whole thing took about ten days. So perhaps something like that is possible for you.

[wesmaster]

Looking into just opening a Merchant Account. It's probably something we should have done already, just didn't know enough about our options.